Even efforts to talk about having such a conversation have been quickly shot down or retracted. In 2010, Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya, speaking at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, said that Thais should discuss the “taboo subject.”
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“I think we have to talk about the institution of the monarchy,” he said. “How it would have to reform itself to the modern globalized world. Like what the British or the Dutch or the Danish or the Liechtenstein monarchy has gone through to adjust itself to the modern world.”
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A government spokesman quickly distanced the government from the comments, saying they were “personal” and not official policy.
One way to assay the strength of the anti-monarchy movement might be by sizing up the military government’s efforts to counter it. The junta, which claims legitimacy from the king’s blessing, has positioned itself as the institution’s ultimate defender.